Posts Tagged ‘Willie Harris’

Thanks to my class with Kevin Blackistone (name drop alert!), I was informed that this crazy random happenstance occurred last night:

Couple that delightful footage with this gem and this story and we start to see a little glimpse into the mind of Nyjer Morgan, a.k.a. Tony Plush, which is nowhere near enough. I don’t just want a glimpse, I want a one-on-one sitdown chat with this crazy mofo, preferably for several weeks, so I can start to really understand what makes this guy tick. Here’s what I’ve gleaned from reading/hearing about him.

Nyjer was born in San Francisco, and grew up playing hockey, which he says was his “first love.” He actually played junior hockey (like the minor leagues of hockey) before decided to commit full-time to baseball when he was 20.

Despite now being a Washington National, he developed a love for the rival Pittsburgh Penguins while playing for the Pirates and witnessing the Pens’ Stanley Cup victory.

He’s a terror on the basepaths, and his speed has made him fantasy relevant for stretches during the past few years, and is a defensive star at centerfield for the Nats.

Combine him with THATV favorite Willie Harris, and the Nats have the most interesting outfield this side of the Texas Rangers (which is really just because I can’t wait until Josh Hamilton relapses and drags Vladimir Guerrero and Nelson Cruz into the bottle/crack pipe with him).

He has what can only be described as severe anger issues. Whether it’s throwing gloves, balls or punches, Nyjer just loves to throw things in inappropriate situations.

Tony Plush is incredibly proud of his rage, as he can clearly be seen celebrating that he got his ass beat by Gaby Sanchez and about a dozen other Marlins. He did get that first shot in though, about a split second before he felt Lyle Overbay 2.0 decleat him.

Why would I possibly want to sit down with a person like this? Well, mostly because he’s a baller. Also, at this stage in his life cycle, if I spend about two hours with him, something absolutely crazy will happen. Guaranteed. Who doesn’t want a friend like that?

Time for another installment of advice, counsel and worldly wisdom. More players, more advice, less talking. Before I get to it, though, I hope at least some of you caught the Thunder-Laker game last night. It was freaking awesome. Maryland may have the patent on the Gold Rush, Penn State on the White-Out, And the Cavs/Angels on Snuggie Records (Here’s the Angels’), but the Thunder just blew them all out of the water with what I’m calling Oklahoma Blue Balls.

Pre-Game Blue Ballin'

Derek Fisher gets balled while the Lakers get Blue Ball'd

Those of you in the know have either already picked up Justin Smoak or are kicking yourselves for missing out. Texas promoted him as Chris Davis struck out in his chance at the big leagues (much like he does far too often at the plate). I distinctly remember paying $20 for him last year and regretting it almost instantaneously. Man he sucks.

Clay Buchholz unfortunately has been dynamite this year, striking out 10 Rangers last night, but (*snickers*) still lost to the team in Arlington. Isn’t it hilarious when the Red Sox lose? I agree with you, everyone who reads this site but Collin. Buchholz should be owned in every league under the sun, but is inexplicably available in 57 of Yahoo! leagues. Go pick him up, if you can. Like, now. You can come back, I trust you.

More out of frustration than anything else, I’m combining the next two pieces of news to a single bullet. Ryan Zimmerman, who missed yesterday’s game, will miss today’s as well with a calf injury. This comes after already missing games with a hamstring problem. Willie Harris can’t solve everything, Ryan. Or should I say, Roger Dorn. Also, Miguel Olivo, who I dropped for Mike Napoli two days ago, per my post, homered again and is batting .303. That’s three homers and a steal on the year for the man who is making it his business to remove another Rhode Islander from the big leagues and to make me second-guess myself. What an ass.

Though Collin already regaled you of the tale of the Brewers’ beatdown of the Pirates, I feel the need to quickly re-hash a point I visited at length yesterday: Rickie Weeks‘ uncanny ability to cross the plate. He scored four times, or every time he reached base, yesterday, pushing his total on the year to 16, good for third in the majors. For every 550 ABs he’s had in the majors (or what I consider an average full season), he’s scored about 106 runs. Considering he bats leadoff, that’s a low full-season projection of ABs, and consequently runs. If he plays a full season, like I said yesterday, he will score 110+ runs, and threaten for 20/20, otherwise known as a sure-fire top-5 2b. Can you tell why I always fall into his trap?

Those of you looking for help at the corners, consider Casey Kotchman and Scott Rolen. I know, neither of these guys have been super fantasy-relevant during their careers, and neither are a spring chicken, but both of them have secure jobs in great positions in their lineups, both of them are absolutely raking right now, and both of them are available in more than 75 percent of Yahoo! leagues. Kotchman’s hitting behind Ichiro, Chone Figgins and Franklin Gutierrez – fast guys who get on base very well and need someone else to drive them in. Kotchman could be that guy with 100 RBI at the end of the year that no one realized. Rolen won’t have lasting success this year, he’s too old and to fragile, but he’s hit four homers so far, he’s in a great ballpark, in a solid lineup, so ride him while you can, if you have space.

Streamable guys for Saturday: The ever-impressive Doug Fister, of course. He’s facing the White Sox, who had four, count ’emfour guys in the lineup batting under .200 yesterday, six under .220. They’re not very good. Fister has been amazing, so if you’re streaming, he looks great. Other good options: Fausto Carmona against the Athletics (a good rule for streaming is: if he’s facing the A’s, pick him up), Pirates prospect Brad Lincoln, 2006’s fourth overall pick, makes his first career start against the Astros…he’s probably better than anyone the Pirates have now, if yesterday is any indication, and Luke Hochevar, who was the first overall pick in that draft, against the Twinkies. If you have no interest in a win or ERA or WHIP, I would bet Ian Kennedy accumulates 6 or 7 strikeouts against the Phils tomorrow.

I’ll leave you with this glorious play from the non-justice-system’d Agent Zero. If this doesn’t motivate you to tune into the playoffs, then you clearly don’t like Lamar Odom getting posterized or fun. Either one.

In case you haven’t read it enough, Jason Heyward has pretty much been deified on this site. More evidence continues to surface to corroborate my (and all of Atlanta’s) argument, as he hit a home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to tie the Phillies, and the Braves would go on to win in extra innings, courtesy of a Nate McLouth walk-off job. Heyward now has four homers, and is tied for fourth in the majors in RBI with 16. He hits sixth in the Braves lineup still, inexplicably behind the useless Troy Glaus, who is hitting .200 with only 2 HR and 8 RBI. Move him up, Cox!

While The Say Hey Baby is trying his balls off to captain my teams onto the leaderboard, they continue to slip. The Loney Bones and Teamocil both lost points yesterday, falling to third and sixth respectively. My offenses, save for Heyward, have completely sputtered. It’s okay, the Hero’s Journey is never easy, but I shall prevail in the end.

Other thoughts on last night’s action:

Darnell McDonald single-handedly saved the Red Sox from themselves last night, hitting a game-tying two-run homer in the eighth and a walk-off single in the ninth. How ironic that a black player rescued the most racist organization in sports…hmm, maybe there is something to this whole integration dealy. For the record, Willie Harris yesterday said he had heard that Boston is a racist city, but said he didn’t experience it while he was there for a few months in 2006. However, since then, I can count the African American that have played for the Sox on one hand – Mike Cameron, Bill Hall, Joey Gathright, Coco Crisp and Royce Clayton. Other than Crisp, none of them played in 100 games, and Crisp was run out of town as soon as Jacoby Ellsbury came along (admittedly, that had more to do with talent than race). That number still strikes me as abysmally low. Just a gripe.

Matt Kemp is tied for the lead in the NL in homers and in the whole damn league in RBI. Remember just two years ago when he was struggling to get playing time because Joe Torre was set on playing Juan Pierre? The guy’s ridiculous, and by next March could be in the discussion for the number one overall pick. He’s also stolen two bases so far. I don’t want to get into what numbers he’s on pace for, but the numbers he’s likely to reach this year could be something like .310, 35 HR, 110 RBI, 100 R and 25 SB. In other words, just redonkalous numbers. Just redonkalous…

Jabula, who I’ve repeatedly trashed for his dealings with The Villain, overtook the lead from said Villain last night, and is free to bite his thumb at me. Kudos on streaming effectively thus far, but somehow I doubt when all is said and done Nelson Cruz will be leading the majors in HR and Jorge Cantu will do the same in RBI, both of whom are doing just that for his team. Enjoy it while it lasts, and I’ll at least take solace in the fact that no true Yankee fan owns Kevin Youkilis.

Carlos Zambrano of Teamocil made the Mets look foolish yesterday, allowing only a two-run triple to Jose Reyes in six innings, striking out nine. While his ERA and WHIP are, how you say, ATROCIOUS, he does have 26 strikeouts in 19.1 innings, which is phenomenal. The 7.45 ERA and 1.86 WHIP aren’t worth it at all, but if he can string together a couple of fine starts like last night’s, he’ll be fine. Remember, he’s never had a year in which his ERA has been above 3.95, so he’s got that going for him. Among his foolish-looking victims was Mets call-up Ike Davis, who’s had a history of strikeout issues in the minors, as detailed here. Acquire at your own risk.

Finally, Jeff Mathis went to the DL with a broken wrist, paving the way for HR-exclusive Mike Napoli, who was a Loney Bone, and made his triumphant return about 5 minutes ago. I say HR-exclusive because all he does is hit home runs. He has a career pace of one home run every 16.8 at-bats, which is about a half-AB less than Hank Aaron. So yeah, he’s pretty good at socking some dingers. If you have a need for home runs and don’t own Victor Martinez, Joe Mauer or Brian McCann, I would recommend picking him up.

Today I joined former Washington Post assistant managing editor for sports George Solomon and his class at UMD for a field trip to lovely Nationals Park. I wasn’t told why his class was going, just that they were going and that I could tag along if I wanted. Well, I wanted to and I did. I was all, “Man, we’re going to go in the locker room, I’m going to get to interview Ryan Zimmerman, Adam Dunn, former Terp Justin Maxwell…it’ll be awesome!” I started thinking I can ask them some questions about fantasy baseball.

So I get there like a half hour early, jot down like 20 questions for those three, and meet with ol’ George (he’s very old), and find out that we won’t be interviewing those guys, we won’t be going into the locker room, or anything remotely useful for this blog. We will sit down in the press room and listen to Miguel Batista and Willie Harris talk about the culture of Major League Baseball and what it’s like being Dominican or African American in today’s MLB. Useless for fantasy reasons, considering they’re both un-ownable, and pretty useless for most reasons. Except for one: the incredible discovery that Willie Harris is the real-life version of Willie Mays Hayes.

Willie Mays Hayes: Play Like Mays, Run Like Hayes

Some quotes I remember from the half hour interview:

“Willie Harris has got to look out for Willie Harris.”

“I wanted to be just like Vince Coleman. I studied film, tried to make my game identical to his.”

“I was big into football in high school. Then I realized I was too small and got out, and got serious about baseball in college.”

“We should’ve gotten the live chicken.”

That last quote was from Mays Hayes himself in Major League and not actually from Harris today, but it might as well have been. It struck me afterward how similar the two were, and I asked the other people there if they agreed, and they all said there was a distinct similarity.

Also, Miguel Batista’s is the freakin’ man. I would go into more detail about that, but you’ll just have to take my word because I don’t feel like it (one thing I will say is that he goes to Central America and backpacks around with a backpack full of books and gives them to poor kids. Yeah, awesome).

Some more thoughts that are actually fantasy relevant:

Carlos Zambrano faces the Mets today. If he gets blown up, I’m dropping him no questions asked. I don’t care how good Ike Davis is, the Mets’ offense is terrible and if he turns in anything other than a quality start he doesn’t deserve to be on any team, let alone mine.

Jason Heyward is second in the majors in RBI, one behind Jorge Cantu, who’s had at least one RBI in every single game but two thus far, starting the year with 14-straight games with one. Why this got so little coverage I have no idea. Heyward is officially a beast, I knew it, picked him up in both leagues, and won’t shut up about him until he slumps. Sorry. Sidenote: he’s exactly 50 days older than I am. Further sidenote: I am now depressed.

Check back here at THATV (the acronym for this blog that shall henceforth be used) later tonight for the post about my team in my other Auction League, which features commenters Brando Commando, Ben, and Jay Bee. Exciting, huh?

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